Dr. Corey Seemiller is an associate professor in the Department of Leadership Studies in Education and Organizations at Wright State University. She is a leading expert on Gen Z and a prolific scholar in the space of leadership education. She's been interviewed by NPR, The New York Times, Newsy, Cheddar, Bloomberg and is the author of Generation Z Goes to College, Generation Z Leads, Generation Z: A Century in the Making, Generation Z Learns, and The Student Leadership Competencies Guidebook.
Links to Corey's Work
Quotes from This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
Dr. Corey Seemiller is an associate professor in the Department of Leadership Studies in Education and Organizations at Wright State University. She is a leading expert on Gen Z and a prolific scholar in the space of leadership education. She's been interviewed by NPR, The New York Times, Newsy, Cheddar, Bloomberg and is the author of Generation Z Goes to College, Generation Z Leads, Generation Z: A Century in the Making, Generation Z Learns, and The Student Leadership Competencies Guidebook.
Links to Corey's Work
Quotes from This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
Note: Voice to text transcriptions are about 90% accurate.
Scott Allen 0:04
Everybody today on the program, we have Corey Seemiller. And many of you listeners will know her name for the prolific work, the output. She's writing about leadership, she's writing about competencies, she's writing about Gen Z, I just had my students, Corey, listen to your TED Talk. And they had so many cool things to say about that Ted Talk. So I'm excited to discuss Gen Z, for sure. Because I think that's an important timely conversation for us to have. But Corey is an associate professor at Wright State University. And she is in the department. Let's see if I can get this right Corey of Leadership Studies in Education and Organizations. Is that close?
Corey Seemiller 0:47
That is spot on.
Scott Allen 0:51
So Corey, maybe Introduce yourself, and then we will jump into maybe we start with Gen Z, and then maybe we start with Gen Z, and leadership and the insights that you're kind of coming to when it comes to that conversation. Is that sound okay? Yeah, sounds great. Good, good.
Corey Seemiller 1:07
Absolutely. Well, I'm really happy to be here, it's a great chance to always catch up with you, Scott. So thanks for inviting me. And it's funny, I will, I will start with a little bit of a story. So how Scott and I met, so we actually met really more formally at an ILA, because alphabetically, Shankman and Seemiller go next to each other, so our little author signing booths were next to each other.
Scott Allen 1:29
Yes
Corey Seemiller 1:29
I remember that year, we kept saying, why are we off on the side, nobody's coming and talking to us. Nobody was coming to the book signings. So we sit and talk for like, two hours. And since then, I've you know, I've been able to work with Scott on so many things. So it's been a lot of fun. But I'm currently at Wright State, I'm starting my sixth year there, which has been a lot of fun. But prior to that, I worked in student affairs, most of that career was in leadership development, leadership programs, social justice, service, learning, community service, those kinds of things. And so I really consider myself a "pracademic," I come from this idea that everything I want to study, everything I want to teach has to have some type of a practical application. Because frankly, working as student affairs, we're just too busy to just, you know, kind of pontificate sometimes you're just like moving and shaking, and I wanted to make sure that I was, so be in that kind of space. So but now I am full-time faculty, and that's been a lot of fun. And I can spend a little bit more time researching and providing materials and resources for people in leadership development, but even outside of leadership, just to be able to work better with college-aged students. That's sort of my, my fanatic piece in the middle of everything I do is studying college-aged students, whether that's their leadership development, or even as I look at Generation Z being our current traditional, even some non-traditional aged college students.
Scott Allen 2:49
Sure, sure. So So let's start it. Let's start at Gen Z. What are some observations? What is some of the work that you've done? Tell You About about Gen Z? Because I think, I think what at least the reflections of my students, they were they, they were consistently writing things like it's "so nice to hear," you know because I think at times we generations, I'm a Gen Xers, so I just, I just remember distinctly, people, you know, bagging on Gen X, that we were lost and all Kurt Cobain or something like that, right? Listening to grunge all day long, and really not much else going on. So So I definitely know how that feels. And I think millennials and I think Gen Z, a significant part of the population, correct? I mean, just a virtual tsunami of people coming into the workforce. So tell me your thoughts.
Corey Seemiller 3:45
Well, one of the things I am accused of is being a generational optimist. Because you know, what you look under the news, you, you know, Google anything around any generation, and it's just these horrible headlines come up about how generations are doing these horrible things. Remember this one that came up that said, "Millennials are Killing the Napkin Industry?" Because there's so environmental and I thought, "really?" is that really the biggest headline? Like, Millennials are, you know, advancing volunteerism at rates we haven't seen in decades? Yeah. Why are we writing stories like that? So when I got into this generational work, I wanted to have a positive spin on it, especially as an educator, I mean, if I start to look "doom and gloom" on our students, then what am I doing in this job, I need to actually think about how I can leverage their potential and help them reach their goals. That's just not even just my job. That's my passion. So yeah, so when people watch my TED Talk, they're always fascinated with the idea that I talk about this generation in a positive light, and that it's about them doing good things. And certainly, we want to be mindful of you know, there are certain factors about every generation that we have to be aware of, and you know, there's certain ones about Generation Z, but if we do nothing but focus on those, I don't think it's entirely productive. And so that's really kind of where I come with this, this generational research, but some of the things that have been interesting that I found, I mean, we've studied Generation Z across the spectrum, everything from dating to learning to civic engagement, well communication. So it's been fun to kind of see these little pieces of Gen Z, but then put them all together in what we call a "peer personality," in your, in your peer personality is, is basically the description of your generational cohort, based on the current events and the context within which you're growing up. So the things that happened between about age 14 and 24 have more of a significant effect on you than any other time in your life. So those are those, those things that happen during that time period, they end up staying with you, you look back at people who were that age during the Depression, and they still had tendencies to, you know, keep things or, you know, look for things and store things in ways that they were doing during the Depression. But people in other age groups didn't have that the same way.
Scott Allen 5:59
Corey in my in Fort in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Grandma Kirkeby, my grandmother in Fort Dodge, she had a lot of canned goods. A lot of canned goods, right?
Corey Seemiller 6:11
Yeah, well, it's leaving little things like tin foil, you know, like, you're like, why are you keeping tin foil? And it's because the mentality that was, you know, that people grew up with is really important. So, as we look at something even like today, as we're looking at 2020, being probably one of the most unique years we've most of us have ever experienced in our lifetimes. You know, I understand what I'm experiencing. I too am a Gen Xer. So I have it in the context of where I am in my life right now. But I can't possibly imagine what it's like to be a 19-year-old college student trying to figure this stuff out. I don't know how I would react, you've got the, you know, you've got the, you know, certainly the pandemic and distance learning, but you've got the just the proliferation of technology, to begin with. I mean, yeah, I'd say, "oh, people are always on their phones," like, well, I'm always on my phone. And if I were young, and I were in college, I would be on my phone, too. So it's been really a kind of an interesting journey to see how this peer personality continues to be shaped. Yeah. And we usually you can't see those shaping or the significance of the shaping of it until well, after? Hmm. You know, studies are just now coming out longitudinal studies about millennials who experienced 9/11 when they were kids. Yeah, just now because we're just now figuring some of those things out. So it's really just kind of an interesting journey to kind of be alongside for the ride with this young generation is they're experiencing the same things I am but in a very different way. And in a very different context.
Scott Allen 7:36
Yeah, yeah, I, this is such a random example. But I think, for instance, something like social media, like Facebook, I experienced Facebook in such a different way, then probably someone who's 18 to 20, who's probably not even on Facebook, as I may as I make that statement, but it's just a completely different existence and how that tool is being used and what the experiences are with that medium. And so what are some themes you're seeing? I liked how you phrase that Corey? I don't know if I'm gonna get it exactly right. But you said something kind of like, I'm kind of walking along with them, and just observing what their experiences are. And so what are some things that are standing up for you about Gen Z, that that a significant, at least indicators, right. Now, of course, as you said, with the studies, the longitudinal studies can't and haven't been done, but what are you seeing?
Corey Seemiller 8:28
Well, there are a couple of things that I think were kind of relatively interesting to me. And I would say this because most of my professional career as a Gen X er has been with Millennial students. And so everything I have is only to compare my job as an educator to having millennial students. So this idea that we were always going to have, quote, Millennials for eternity, I don't understand why people who think everybody under the age of 35 is a millennial. And so that's why I was really using it, I don't know. But there were a couple of things that really stood out as different than millennials. And one of those things is the way that Generation Z students prefer to learn and again, this is like...these are themes. So it's not that every single Gen Z student prefers this way, but and it's this idea of intrapersonal learning, I want to learn on my own. And it's kind of an interesting phenomenon because well, we came off of millennials who were very much into collaborative learning, interpersonal learning, I'm going to be in these, you know, study groups and even think about it like libraries and college campuses, you know, build these like glass rooms where you could gather with your friends and study and write on the walls. Gen Z looks at that and says, "Are you kidding me? I'm not getting a glass room and studying with other people. I don't want to be the object or spectacle of people as they're walking by." I don't want to go in the corner and they want to study on their own may be next to a few trusted friends. Because they really like this thing called social learning, which is learning next to each other but not learning necessarily with each other. Imagine like when you put babies in a sandbox, and you can call it a playdate. They're not really playing together, they're flinging sand next to each other, right? That's the same kind of concept social learning is this idea that we're next to each other, but not necessarily learning with each other. So to me, that was an interesting finding. And I think once we kind of has a chance to retroactively go back and look at the growth and the immediate shift to distance learning with COVID, we're going to start to see how Gen Z responded in both synchronous and asynchronous environments where they had to really do a lot more interpersonal learning was that really when they didn't have a lot of it, but they wanted it The grass is always greener, or after they've done it for a few years, are they thinking, "Wait a minute, I really actually want to be with people and I want to learn with them." And, again, that's not something we're going to know until we're a little bit further out. So to me, that was huge, that was a huge difference to try to understand this generation. I think one of the other things that were really big was this notion of their engagement. I'm Gen X, just like you and we've been touted as being the most apathetic generation in history.
Scott Allen 11:04
Yeah, you're you are fitting that mold and, and right, exactly, we just saw latchkey kids like it was that the same thing? Yeah. latchkey kid, divorced and no one's in the house, and I got to let myself in and...
Corey Seemiller
Exactly I don't care about anyone, I'm not gonna do anything, you're just gonna go. And maybe that's what it was. But it's funny, because as you know, I apathetic generation, we sort of grew up and became all the entrepreneurs. So most of the big companies that people, you know, use today have look at their CEO, they're almost all Gen X. Yeah, it's actually kind of funny. But, you know, we, you know, when we start looking at Gen Z, and them, you know, they're not apathetic at all and normal millennials, but they were just different. Yeah, Millennials were our kind of service generation, they were the ones who stepped it up and did more volunteerism and community service than we'd seen in a long time. So much so that in the early 2000s, college campuses were scrambling around creating service-learning programs and volunteer offices. And because these millennials came to college and said, "Where am I going to volunteer, to volunteer," and then we sort of scrambled and created that Gen Z came in now we're like, "why is Gen Z coming to the volunteer office? And why isn't Gen Z going on my alternative for spring break trips? Don't they care about these things?" And the answer is, yes, they care. But they're very specific about what they care about. And they know what they care about. And they want to get involved with a specific issue. So unless that issue is front and center as a program on campus, they're not necessarily flocking to it, you're looking at maybe a high schooler who has been involved in, you know, eradicating plastics from the ocean, and been involved in an organization doing trainings and be gone to an environmental camp when they come to campus. And there's an alternative spring break, that has nothing to do with the environment. It's not that they don't want to be involved. They just are really passionate about the environment, and they want to find something about that. So it's, it's really kind of, it's kind of an interesting, interesting shift, and Gen Z. With that said, really prefers long term involvement. They don't want to go and do four hours of volunteer work, and then leave and never seen organization, they want to work with an organization for years and make big changes and social impact and, and not necessarily addressing the symptoms, I always say they'd rather "build the weld and deliver the water." Yeah, we need people to deliver the water we do because people won't have it if we don't, but at the same time, we have a generation that their commitment, and their passion is on building the well. How do we, especially as educators tap into that or help leverage that or help get them connected to resources? So those two for me were two of the biggest kind of shifts, especially as they're positioned against trends that we saw with Millennial college students.
Scott Allen
Yeah. Well, that's really, really interesting. Then, the notion of, you know, "I'm passionate about topics, but I'm going to be passionate about what I'm passionate about. And if the thing you're offering me isn't that, then thanks. But you know, it may not be what I want to spend my time on." And in some ways, I wonder if that, you know, I'm speaking out loud here, so I'm just pontificating, but does that mirror some of our other trends across society where I can kind of have exactly what I want when I want it right now. And that's where I'm going to spend my energy and that's where I'm gonna invest my time. And I just I wonder, right? I mean, the fact back to where we this is turning into a Gen X reminiscing kind of I don't know that there were even study the study abroad programs at the University of Minnesota there where I'm sure but no one that I was around was going on them. And, and then that kind of started ramping up, but now it seems to be getting more and more hyperfocused. Or at least people have the ability to hyperfocus however they would like to is that make sense? Or is that?
Corey Seemiller
Yeah, no you're spot on. I mean, if you think about it, you Now again, kind of dating us here a little bit is, you know, when I was in college, we didn't have the internet yet. Yeah. And it was just gonna get online. Yeah, I couldn't figure out what to get involved with. No, I saw a flyer hanging in my residence hall that said, "Come Do you know, to this program about this topic," I didn't really have much of an experience with other topics. And I said, "Okay," so it was kind of an introduction to my passions, where a lot of these young people, you know, have these passions that are just so deep. I mean, I have an 11-year-old, who is so passionate about preventing euthanasia with the cat population, she has watched, I mean, hundreds of hours of videos, she's doing this trap, neuter, and release training this weekend, we're fostering kittens. She's 11 years old. Yeah, she knows what her passion is. And she can customize that, like what you're talking about, based on the fact that there are so many resources available to her to be involved with that issue Well before she even comes to college. So this assumption that students are showing up in college and like, I don't really know what I care about. That's the case for some of them. But it's not nearly as much as it was when we didn't have access to resources to expose us to the issues that we might be carrying, you know, we might care about.
Scott Allen
Yeah, yeah. Well, and so how do you think this translates for Gen Z when it comes to the topic of leadership? What, what observations or just hypotheses have you come up with that stand out for you?
Corey Seemiller 16:21
Well, you know, we've seen this in a number of our studies, and as well as other studies as well, is that Gen Z is really not a huge fan of formal leadership positions. And I'm a qualitative researcher. So there are some things I can't even say on-air as to how they feel about formal leadership positions and specifically formal leaders. But they do use some words like basically anybody in a leadership position is "corrupt, greedy, unethical, use their power for no good doesn't know my needs." And that's come up. Generally, that's come up in terms of just politics. But this idea that leaders are somehow not something that I want to be, well, I don't want to be that because I don't want to be affiliated with those bad things. So instead of this idea, I can be something different as a leader that's not necessarily front and center in their minds. It's, I don't want to do this, because I don't want to be in this situation or this context, or be perceived as such. So what they're doing and I talked a little bit about in my TED Talk is they're working right around the system. They believe in many ways, many of them believe the system is broken, whatever this system is, that is elevating certain people to power and others not that it is marginalizing, it is demeaning. It is inequitable, and they come at it from every lens, social justice environment, you name it. And they say, in some ways, I just don't want to play. So. So I want to check out of it, I'm going to make a difference, which inherently we know is leadership. Yeah, I want to make a difference, but they don't see it as leadership. But they do it on their own. And they kind of work right around the things that are happening. And I think I think it's fascinating. There's an example I talked about it. I've talked about it before with some folks is this idea of young people feeling like they have really not a lot of power to create change around gun safety. Okay. And after the Parkland shooting, a group of you know, folks from the school went up to lobby the Florida Legislature, and they didn't, they didn't really get very far on advancing the legislation that they wanted. They were trying to work within the system trying to, you know, engage in leadership trying to get these people to make these changes, and it didn't happen. But you know, shortly before that, even before the Parkland shooting, there was a teenager, in I believe he was from Wisconsin, and his name is Justin. And he said, "You know what, I'm not sure that, you know, I'm not sure how we can prevent school shootings, but I have an idea." And he made this little contraption, like for like, $5, I think it was for a school project. And it slides on the inside of a door of a classroom that prevents a shooter from getting in. So if you think that there's an active shooter, or like, the alarm goes off, you close the door and sort of tears up, you just slide this thing under. He said, If we can get these into classrooms, we can prevent school shootings, and this, this is just one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of Gen Zer saying, "I don't trust leaders to make decisions that are in my best interest, I don't trust the system, I'm going to just go ahead and start doing things that I think are going to make a difference because that's the only power and agency that I have." And so for them, they're doing leadership, but they're not really calling it that,
Scott Allen 19:24
okay, okay. And this is really, really interesting. When they're kind of working outside of these formal lines of authority, so to speak, quote, unquote, they're coming up with very, very creative, creative ways to attack and tackle some of these issues that work around the formal lines of authority. That's really interesting. And, and that's how they're making a difference.
Corey Seemiller 19:52
Up until now, it was and they and back when we had the 2016 presidential election, you know, the question was, was this generation going to show up and actually have a say in a formal system? And, you know, at that point I had said Probably not, and they really didn't come out in high numbers. And that's not high numbers compared to older generations, because the youngest voters always turn out at lower rates. But it's compared to other first time voters that, you know, over the course of history, it was a pretty low turnout. Will they show up in 2020? Potentially, they showed up in 2018. So they started to reengage back in a system that they didn't trust in 2018. Because they wanted to have a voice. In 2020, will they show up even more, perhaps, because I think sometimes, it's easier to say I'm going to work around the system? But once you realize how powerful that system is, you realize that you might have to get inside and within the system to make that change. So I'm going to be curious to track that over the next well, this election, and certainly the next couple of years to see if their notion of creating change involves basically playing within the existing systems, as well as working around them. So I think that there they have a multiple, you know, tiered approach.
Scott Allen 21:03
Yeah, yeah. And there are so many new resources, whether it's the digital platforms and ways to even be thinking about leadership. But, you know, whether it's their access to information, and access to knowledge of how things work, and what's happened. And I mean, it can at a very early age, I imagine give someone a cynical perspective on "Well, why try?" Right? But what else? What other themes from Gen Z when it comes to leadership kind of stand out for you?
Corey Seemiller 21:35
You know, in addition to the kind of the word leadership or, you know, this notion of being a leader, I think some of the other things that show up around how the roles that they play in groups, and I think this is interesting, we've asked them the types of roles they frequently play leader was the last one on the list. So actually kind of taking the initiative of a situation kind of stepping up leading the charge. in kind of a more, I guess, you would say, stereotypical leader role was something that they're fewer of them said that they engaged in, they're much more interested in being the strategists, the thinker, the what, how do we put this together? How do we create a vision? How do we all work together, or the relator, where they actually try to bring people together? The biggest one and the most, the biggest role, and the most frequent role that they play is The Doer. A lot of you know, in a group, I just want to I want to, I want somebody to tell me what to do give me direction, and then I'll go do it. I don't really want to be in charge of other people. I don't really want to be in charge of the process. But I can, while I'm a workhorse, I can get it done. And that's, you know, that's really kind of an interesting, interesting finding in, especially in the fact when you start looking at it again, I take like a sociology perspective here, because I don't think that people drop out of the sky with no context. Most Gen Z ers are raised by Gen X ers. Okay. Yeah, of course, it's my way of bringing myself back into you know, if at the end of the day, it's all about Gen Xers, but yeah, but no, in, in reality, most Gen Z ers are raised by Gen Xers, not exclusively, but most of them are an X ers or raising their kids to look an awful lot like them. And that's part and parcel for the fact that boomers raised their millennial children to not have their childhood experience. They wanted to give them almost the opposite of what they experienced in their childhood. And so Gen X came along and said, I'm we're gonna have really purposeful parenting, and we're going to instill those kinds of values that we want, that we believe are important, which are, of course, the values that Gen X mostly holds this idea of independence, autonomy, cynicism, and independence and, and those kinds of things. And so Gen X has backed off a little bit from their Gen Z kids and let them step up and do take on roles or have what I call with my daughter the law of natural consequences. Yeah, in some sense, as long as it's not too much. Yeah, I do remember that. When she was about three years old, her teachers gave me the feedback that said, when she's at this little preschool, "she's very much a leader." And I said, "Uh Oh, I work in leadership. And I don't think you're using that word in the way that I want you to, tell me more. Well, she goes on the playground. And she bosses everyone around, like, Okay, so what happens? And I said, Well, nobody wants to play with her. So I told my daughter, I said, Hey, listen, you know, if you keep doing that, no one's gonna want to play with you. I didn't tell her to stop doing it. Yeah, well, she kept doing for a little while. Nobody wanted to play with her. And then she realized, I gotta get it together and stop being bossy. And so that's a Gen X parenting style where we say you got to figure it out a little bit on your own. And so what's happening that's translating into, you know, Gen X, Gen Z is looking very much like those hard, hard-working doers, that Gen X has always been known for is the determination of perseverance, the, you know, get through it, the independence. And so that's what you're seeing from some of the Gen Z ers when it comes to their kind of work ethic, and then the roles that they like to play when they're in groups. And that means sometimes deferring to a leader and just stepping up and being that person who does,
Scott Allen 25:16
Yeah, yeah. Well, so what are the the year ranges for Gen Z, just for listeners? And for me?
Corey Seemiller 25:26
You know, nobody can agree on them. So let me tell you what they generally are. We, when we've done our studies, we use the dates born 1995 through 2010. Early Generation Z researchers use those states that are from Sparks and Honey, are it's a market research firm that did a lot of generational research. A few years ago, Pew came out Pew Research Center and said, "Oh, no, no, no, that's 1997 to 2012." And then people got in a tizzy. Like, wait a minute, I don't know what is the dates are? Yeah. And then they kind of came back and said, but but but we're not sure. We just are saying that, because those are some of our studies. So at this point in time, we can probably say that most people, most middle school, high school, college, that's probably our Gen Z population. If you were to look at our dates there, that group would be turning 25 this year? Yes. So those are graduate students, those are employees in the workforce, you know, married potentially children? Who knows? So it's kind of an evolving thing where we have as young as fifth-graders but as old as someone who might be married with a three or four-year-old child.
Scott Allen 26:34
Yeah. Well, so Corey, you, you've done so much work in so many different areas, what one of them is the workaround leadership competencies? And I'd love to get the latest on that space where you are there. And are you seeing any new things emerge in that work? Based on some of this work? Is anything new bubbling up? Or is it? Is it kind of holding steady with what you have kind of been studying for? What is it now? Is it almost a decade that you've been doing this work? 12 years? Wow. Oh, yeah.
Corey Seemiller 27:10
Well, you know, the student leadership competencies I kind of fell into based on the fact that I was just trying to figure out what I supposed to be teaching in my leadership program and what I should be measuring. So I said, let me you know, then I had an employee who said, Well, before we develop the evaluation, so we think, don't you think we should come up with like, a list of things that students should be learning? And I said, Yeah, that sounds good. But how should we think? Yeah, you can't measure what you don't know. So I'm like, So anyways, I said, Well, how do we create this list? Do we just sit down and think about things? We think I'm like, I think visions good. He's like, Oh, no, let's not do that. So we actually went to in 2008, we actually looked at a series of leadership models, leadership documents and things to consolidate, basically, we put together like a meta list of everybody's models and things, and came up with a list that we called the competencies, which is just like, again, a macro list of things that were already published. And, you know, done a lot of studies and put out a book and a few things just to help people and have some tools on that. But one of the big studies that I did, initially, which was thanks to Dr. Susan Komives, she recommended this study a while back, but I will tell you, it's kind of funny, she, she had recommended one thing, and I, we went another direction, which was a lot more work. So I kind of wish we had listened a little bit better. But he had actually recommended to my colleague and I that we take our list of leadership competencies, and we go through all the academic accredited programs. They're their accreditation manuals. Yeah, there's a section in each of them that has learning outcomes, and that we actually compare our list of those learning outcomes and see if there's any leadership in there. Yeah. And I now I'm looking back. And I realized that at the point that she recommended it, she said, you should look at some of these manuals. And what we heard is that you should look at all of these manuals. Yeah. So it took five years to go through them all. And I mean, we had Excel spreadsheets and you know, tagging them and all sorts of things. And we ended up publishing a piece in the Journal of Leadership Studies back in 2013, about our findings, but you know, accrediting manuals change. And so in 2019, I decided to sit down with them all again by myself. And instead of spending five years with two people, we spent one year with just me and I went through and just redid the entire analysis to see our leadership competencies, part of what higher education programs should be doing? And you probably say, Why crediting manuals, right of all the things that you can do? Well, accrediting manuals are shaped by the professionals in those fields. I mean, you know, you have like, the nursing field wants people to graduate nurses that are prepared to actually work. So accrediting meals are one of the best ways to look at what is expected of workers in those fields. So I looked at everything. I mean, you name the field, as long as it's accredited. I looked at it and yeah, it was more than 36,000 learning outcomes.
Scott Allen 29:59
Oh my gosh.
Corey Seemiller 30:00
Yeah, it was a lot and but what I, what I found was of the five most like kind of what we call popular or prevalent competencies that came up in the 2013 study, three of those five came up in the 2019 study. So there is some consistency in that. But then there were some changes, actually, in 2019 ethics just flew right to the top require more programs requiring ethics. Well, you know, there's probably a lot of obvious reasons that we could study about why that is, in writing move down. So I thought that was really interesting. Like, you don't care what you write, or just make some good decisions, right. So yeah, so it's been really interesting doing that study and kind of parsing it out. And one of the things too, is being able to look at degree level and realizing that leadership is embedded into so many graduate programs as far as their learning outcomes. And when we look at leadership, education in a college setting, at least at the CO curricular level, I know that very little happens at the graduate level, it's mostly undergraduate. And we don't see as many programs at community colleges. So we see them mostly in four-year institutions. And, and is that kind of a wake-up call that we need to be looking at leadership development across the degree curriculum, not just across a four-year curriculum. So it's really neat to just kind of look at those nuances and says, empirically, here's what's showing up. What do we do with that?
Scott Allen 31:22
Yeah. And what do we do with that? What do you think? What, what's next for us?
Corey Seemiller 31:30
That's a great question. I think we need to start having some conversations about, about programs at the graduate level, I think that that's a really important thing, especially co-curricular programs. You know, as we continue to grow, degree-granting programs we see at the undergraduate level, we see a lot of minors, yeah. And then at the graduate level, we see a lot of degrees or majors or whatever you want to call them. Yeah. It's trying to figure out how that kind of parses out, are there, you know, or is leadership not even addressed on campus? Is there even at least a leadership class that people can take or a leadership program that they can do in addition to their major? I think what's interesting about this is that, you know, here we are trying to, in some sense, convince a group of Gen Z years is in college, that leadership is important, yet, we seem to have big pockets of absences of leadership development, depending on where people are going, especially with the rising price of higher education. And we're seeing, you know, overall declining enrollment at four-year institutions and increasing enrollment at two-year institutions. And that's not where we're seeing a lot of leadership programs on leadership courses, should we be focusing more efforts on those? So I think it's just kind of a bigger conversation, looking at a number of trends at the same time to say, how do we engage, especially our Gen Z folks in believing that leadership is important, and believing that they have the capacities to go do leadership, even not in a formal position? But we need to be looking at that across various programs across various levels?
Scott Allen 32:59
Yeah, yeah. What was the other one other than ethics skyrocketed up, you said? Was there another one that comes to mind that when those three of the five that kind of entered?
Corey Seemiller 33:09
Well, yeah, I can tell you what the first, the three that stayed consistent. Were verbal communication, evaluation. They actually stayed consistent. And then the other ones that were muddied around, actually those so it was two that stay consistent ethics and writing, writing still stayed towards the top. But ethics jumped up to number two other ones that were up there were listening, analysis - analysis is like critical thinking - collaboration and research, being able to find an answer to a question that you have. Yeah, things that didn't make it really high. Were really around this idea of what I call personal behavior, one's things around the initiative, confidence, resiliency, all the things that you study, Scott, which we need, we need desperately, and they're showing up in all sorts of other employee competency lists, you know, like the World Economic Forum, and LinkedIn has these great competency lists, so does nice and Center for Creative Leadership and they're all talking about particular competencies related to emotional intelligence, yet, we're not necessarily seeing that reflected in higher ed learning outcomes, which means that our students even getting this stuff.
Scott Allen 34:19
Yeah, at all. Yeah. Well, how about teaming and collaboration? Is that kind of somewhere down a little bit lower as well?
Corey Seemiller 34:30
Um, yeah, collaboration is at the top. It says like, in the top 10. Okay. And it's interesting, because it's, it's one of the only people-oriented competencies that rose up. I mean, verbal communication did as well, but a lot of the other ones are, strategic or intrapersonal, that you have people thinking about how they're going to individually act may be as a leader or as someone engaging leadership, but not necessarily with others. So what does that mean? I mean, the higher education accrediting, you know, The Learning Outcomes aren't the be all end all of what we should be doing. But it's the be-all and end-all of what these programs are being evaluated on. That's their currency. Julie supplement that currency with things we know that students need, do we also accentuate that currency by saying, okay, your program needs this, let me tell you how I can help provide that. There are lots of different approaches, but it's probably an important thing to understand. What is it that academic, you know, programs actually are looking for leadership? Yeah, that might give us a better chance to figure out ethics, co-curricular and the curricular level, what kinds of things we might want to be focusing on how we want to market that to the students on campus?
Scott Allen 35:36
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's I had a really fun conversation with Barbara Kellerman. And, of course, you know, her mantra right now is that we're professionalizing some of this that the field needs to be professionalized. And I have another conversation with Eric Guthey from the Copenhagen Business School. And he says, That's not even possible, it can't happen. But it is interesting. I'm writing a paper right now, where we looked at the top 25 business schools, they're their mission vision statements, and they all have leadership except for two. But when you really look at how they've even defined that, or they're thinking about that, or proposing to actually develop leadership with, you know, oftentimes one class in the graduate program, in the MBA, maybe one for management-oriented majors, as undergrads, it's, I don't know, there's an opportunity, there's an opportunity, there's a lot of opportunities to do this better. Or at least start creating some paradigms where, look, you know, Suzuki method, right? If we want to teach someone to a stringed instrument, that's at least our method. And karate is a method in jujitsu is a method, but it's so all over the place that I have great respect for you at least trying to get your hands around. What does this even look like? What should we be doing? And then I had a great conversation with Susan Komives kind of about some of this look, you know, what, what do we need to scaffold? How do we scaffold this in a meaningful way? So we're not throwing the kitchen sink at people and hoping you know, a little bit of it sticks. But again, I go back, my mind goes back to karate, right now. They scaffold it, right? In a very beautiful way it's scaffolded it. And in the same thing with being a pilot or being a surgeon, we're going to start with gall bladders. We're gonna move on to the heart, you know, after about eight years, scaffold this? Yes.
Corey Seemiller 37:41
But stitches on the orange first,
Scott Allen 37:44
back to the pilot analogy, you know, we're like, and then there's an attitude, and then there's this throttle. And then you can do this, and then there's wings and arrghh!
Corey Seemiller 37:53
Exactly, exactly.
Scott Allen 37:56
Now go fly. Right? Right, that into a room and talked about it now go do it, you know? Yeah, there's so much opportunity, so much opportunity. I am so appreciative of your time today, we're in about 40 minutes. And I always close these out by going through a little bit of a lightning round. And is there anything that your reading or streaming, or listening to right now that's really standing out for you? What's piqued your interest?
Corey Seemiller 38:27
You know, what I am doing right now I am actually taking the class called The Science of Happiness through Berkeley, or edX class that they think it's a lot of time, it's like, gonna probably be 75 hours, by the time I'm done, really get a certification in happiness. And it's really interesting to me because I get to teach, I get to teach a class on emotional intelligence. And I weave that into a lot that I do. Yeah, that's why I'm super respectful of the work that you have done. And you and Marcy and Paige have done. But this class is really interesting. It's the Science of Happiness, not the art of happiness. So I'm learning about some of the biological elements of things when I've learned about the social science element. So it's actually really kind of an interesting class to be taking. But it's also weird to be sort of back in the distance learning classroom and taking, you know, doing homework and
Scott Allen 39:15
so explain edX for listeners real quick, just so they end for me because I have not explored it. So are you paying? Are you paying for the class? Obviously?
Corey Seemiller 39:23
Well, it's considered a MOOC, which is a massive online something course. Yeah. And it's it. I mean, it can have hundreds if not thousands of people in it. And they're free to take. So you can take them through I think MIT and Berkeley and a few others, EdX offers them. And I think there are a couple of other platforms. If you want to get the certificate, though, and you want to actually be certified, then you have to take all the tests and the quizzes and do the homework, and you pay a very small fee, and then you get a certificate in the end. So I did the fee-based one because I really just want to kind of get into it and learn as much as I can.
Scott Allen 39:55
Yeah. If I recall, there was a happiness scientist at the University, University of Illinois, who is fairly famous, but I don't know I'm forgetting. I'm forgetting his name. But the Science of Happiness that's you're getting into what? all kinds of interesting things personality, genetics, environment,
Corey Seemiller 40:18
and frontal lobe and neurons and all sorts of things
Scott Allen 40:21
Denmark, Scandanavia...because they're the happiest, the healthiest.
Corey Seemiller 40:27
I think I'll end up getting to that point in a further chapter. So yeah, right now we're talking about compassion and how compassion is. Yes, right.
Scott Allen 40:36
Yeah. And in gratitude, you have a mindset of gratitude. You are you Yeah, it's fun. Yeah. Very cool.
Corey Seemiller 40:45
Absolutely.
Scott Allen 40:47
Okay, Corey, thank you so much for being with us today. We really, really appreciate it. Thanks for the good work you do. Keep doing that great work. And we will talk soon I might see what ILA, the digital version in a couple of weeks.
Corey Seemiller 41:00
Exactly.
Scott Allen 41:02
Take care.
Corey Seemiller 41:02
Thanks so much for having me. Okay. Okay.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai